


Eavesdropping

by geeksthetics



Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-14 04:40:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14762762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geeksthetics/pseuds/geeksthetics
Summary: “Will you silence yourselves and let me think?!”Caspian blinked. His uncle was a temperamental man but he had never heard him raise his voice before.Caspian wondered what exactly was going on in his uncle’s study.





	Eavesdropping

“Will you silence yourselves and let me think?!”

Caspian blinked. His uncle was a temperamental man but he had never heard him raise his voice before.

Caspian wondered what exactly was going on in his uncle’s study. He had seen men file into the large room, each looking more pensive than the last, as he made his way from the kitchen. The cook had found the seven-year-old boy, once again, raiding through the cabinets to find the cookies he knew the cook hid for festivities. She had been dragging Caspian by the ear to his uncle Miraz’s study for a stern talking-to when the sudden line of reluctant noblemen was entering it. After a quick, hushed conversation with Miraz’s steward, the cook, obviously dismissed, gave Caspian a dark look and stalked away mumbling something about usurpers and bratty kings-to-be. Caspian hadn’t paid much attention to the cook as he had been too busy wondering what all those men were doing in his uncle’s study. The castle had a room specifically meant for meetings with powerful men. What is it called? The counter room? Consul room?

As he had stood in the end of the hall contemplating the name of the room, the hall had slowly emptied so that Caspian remained with the whispers of the men in the study to be heard. They were quiet, though, so that only an ear pressed against the thick wooden panel of the door could capture any conversation from the room – which was exactly what Caspian’s curiosity led him to do. He didn’t know why, but he felt like he needed to hear the conversation.

At first he was bored by the few things he could pick up. He heard a few tidbits of how the trade industry was beginning to decline and inflation was becoming a serious problem as pensions stagnated and several other things Caspian knew were serious yet his young mind couldn’t comprehend.

Then, the volume in the room suddenly rose. The voices of the men sounded outraged and furious. Caspian could hear the men clearly now. They asked Miraz how he could possibly do such a thing, and how would he even succeed. As man tried to speak over man, the noise in the room became deafening. Caspian understood even less than when they were speaking in hushed voices.

“And what of the boy?” Caspian knew that voice. It was the Lord Glozelle. Even though his voice was low and much quieter than the other men’s, Caspian knew that voice anywhere. Shivers ran up his spine as he was reminded of a venomous snake slithering through sheets of velvet, ready to strike whoever dared to grab the fabric, just as it had happened to a maid when a Calormen’s viper had escaped its basket. The maid had died within an hour’s time from the venom, while the snake had been placed back into its basket and unfairly remained alive. If there was one man to fear, it was Lord Glozelle.

Caspian wondered what boy Glozelle could be speaking of. He hoped it wasn’t himself. He didn’t want to be the object of Glozelle’s inquiry, even if it was to ask him how his lessons were going as he sometimes tended to do whenever he ran into the boy in the halls. Glozelle frightened Caspian and he wanted to have nothing to do with the lord.

The room had instantaneously silenced at Glozelle’s questioned. Chaos broke out immediately after the short pause. Caspian flinched away. He didn’t like loud noises, especially those that surprised him.

Then, Miraz roared, “Will you silence yourselves and let me think?!”

Caspian gasped. Miraz wasn’t a man to shout. He brought fear into the most dauntless of men through his quiet reprimands that promised the coming of something heinous as their true punishment. Caspian had never heard his uncle raise his voice above what his nurse had called an “inside voice”. Not even when he went out riding and tried to call out to a servant or accompanying rider. His uncle’s loudness scared Caspian, and it must have scared the noblemen as well as they silenced in an instant.

A woman’s soft and soothing voice was heard momentarily. Prunaprismia, Miraz’s wife, must be inside. Caspian wrinkled his nose at the thought of his unlikeable aunt sitting to Miraz’s left with her chin raised, acting as if she were already Queen of the Telmarines.

Miraz spoke after a few beats of silence. “I have yet to plan something for the boy.” Miraz paused. “Although, we all know what must be done for me to take –“

A hand suddenly dragged Caspian away from the door. “Boy, what do you think you are doing here?” Mriaz’s steward quietly jeered at him. He narrowed his eyes as he realized what Caspian must have been doing with his ear pressed to the study door. “Were you eavesdropping?” The steward angrily shook Caspian a bit but tried not to make any noise so not as to rouse the attention of the men inside study.

Caspian didn’t try to defend himself as he had heard a sudden muffled shout coming from the study. What had been said? Was it about what Miraz had said about the boy? What was it he wanted to take from the boy? What was it Miraz needed to do to the boy? Who, exactly, was the boy?

Those questions ran through his mind as the steward dragged him to his new tutor, Doctor Cornelius. He didn’t pay much attention to his first lesson with Doctor Cornelius as he was still thinking about Miraz and the men in the study. It wasn’t until Doctor Cornelius procured a book about the stars that Caspian stopped thinking about what he had heard and subsequently forgot it for a long time.

If the steward had not arrived at that exact moment, if the men had been speaking slightly louder, if Caspian had stayed a few minutes longer, he would have heard his uncle say, “Although, we all know what must be done for me to take the crown that so rightfully belonged to me.”

Caspian would have heard Lord Sopespian ask, “So you determine yourself in killing your own nephew?”

Caspian would have heard his cruel aunt answer, “If it is what it takes to take the crown, then yes. It is exactly what he will do. He will kill Caspian.”

Caspian would have heard what was a collective shout of approval coming from the Telmarine noblemen.

Later in his life, after being crowned King of Narnia by the Great Lion Himself, Caspian would remember that day and what he had heard and would lay in bed at night wondering what it was his uncle and his men had been going on about with what he had wanted to take and whether the boy mentioned had in fact been the young Caspian, heir to the Telmarine throne.


End file.
